I do enjoy a good brew

Earlier this year Jam became a member of our local brewery the excellent Loose Cannon Brewery. It was a new start up in 2010 and as Abingdon hadn't had a brewery since the much missed Morland (who beautiful tile you can see below and which can be found on the side of all pubs past and present in Abingdon & beyond who stocked those beers).

Thanks to Jim for this image

We decided we would support the new brewery so as well as sampling a few of their beers Jam became a member. Monday night Jam received a text inviting us to go for an official tour of the brewery with 'nibbles' and beer provided on Tuesday. How could we refuse?

 The Brewery itself was basically a large room containing all the equipment for making the beer, but the story behind the enterprise was much more interesting... It turns out that Will (the chap who started the brewery) is part of the Laithwaite's family and its his older brother who is responsible for much of their wine production.

Will looking proudly at one of the enormous fermenting vats

 Being the younger brother he preferred beer so using a college nickname (Loose Cannon) and hiring most of the start up equipment he set out to make some beer.

  The first beer they made was the excellent Abingdon Bridge (being held by Jam here) the beer has a nice deep taste (or as my mum put it, it's tasty) and a beautiful almost red colouring). Dark Horse (a porter type beer), Loose cannon pale (paler, almost- whisper it, larger) and new addition bombshell (its blonde, need we say more).

The Loose Cannon team ready for action

We got to try a new beer that has just finished being developed & there was a competition to name it (with our recent luck with crating cheese we thought this was worth a punt. I went for Ridgeway Riddler (the ridgeway being a local bit of land & riddler as I couldn't quite put my finger on the lingering taste, whereas Jam went for Wittenham Warbler (wittenham clumps being another local beauty spot and the warbler in Jam's own words 'continuing the animal legacy set down by dark horse' (hmmm).

 Anyway we'll see if either of those is deemed worthy, the winner gets a case or Abingdon Bridge which would be nice! The nibbles consisted of sausage & chips from the chip shop down the road. All in all we had a fab night, got to drink some delicious beer and learnt a bit more about the strange art that is beer brewing (I'm hoping to start some more sloe gin this weekend but the micro brewery may well have to wait till next year).

Will showing off the different types of grain used in all the different beers

If your in Abingdon or an Oxfordonian or even visiting I can heartily recommend a visit to the Loose Cannon Brewery.     

The end, of this blog post and sadly my pint :-)

Circus weekend

Firstly and most importantly Jam passed his exam! He definitely deserved to as he's been revising really hard for weeks! He bought himself a mini keg of Abingdon ale from the excellent Loose Cannon brewery

and I got some roses for being a patient girlfriend & not moaning (that much) about him ignoring me
(you may remeber this was one of the first things he bought me).

 Anyway on to the title of this post, because Jam didn't have to revise anymore we made it to the Big Kid Circus which mysteriously popped up in a field very close to our house.

 Alas we weren't allowed to take photos during the performance but I managed to get this one of the wheel of death as it was being assembled during the interval

 (it accommodated two men, one in each wheel and rotated, I was scared enough when the men were inside their respective wheels but then one got out and started walking on the outside (a bit scary, there is a photo of the wheel of death in action on their website). Also a bit scary but not as bad as they could have been was the clown, but he didn't get too close so that was okay.

 Much to my disappointment they didn't have anyone doing what I would call proper aerial stuff (climbing silks etc). Sarah's & Nomi's  blog (both of which I'm a regular reader) gives a snapshot into the aerial world & its something I really enjoy watching and would like to have a go at. So on returning from the big top I had a look for aerial classes in Oxford. Sadly there are none as yet but Oxford University are trying to set something up, so I guess there is some hope there. But I did find these amazing classes in London, so me and my friend Zoe are now booked to attend in a couple of weeks time (*excitement*). We also went out for a meal with James family this weekend as it was his nannas birthday. Here is us in a village called halfway at a pub called the Halfway House .

Jam moves in

 So this weekend after one and a half years of dating along the A34 (Jam lived in Newbury while I frequented the substantially more awesome Oxfordshire) Jam finally moved in with me!

This did mean a sad farewell to Dave the housemate (also known as Gravy Davey, photographer, friend of Mabel, eater of lime Doritos and master of the late night 80's revival) but he had decided to move back to the wirral to be with his family, so Jam moved in.

 We had a slight disagreement on the first night (read quite a large blazing row) as Jam wanted his own room, in which to hang fairy lights, store his computer and hang up semi nudy pictures of a certain miss Minogue. While I originally tried to put my foot down against this 'man cave' it would appear I have new given in... Here are a few of the awesome cards we received from friends & family

 From our friends Nick & Beth

From mum & dad, witchcat on a plinth!

A Jam plan (or invasion)

So after a year and a bit together my beloved Jam has finally agreed to move into Mason du Rose! To say that I'm really excited would be an understatement but I'm a little scared as well (what if it doesn't work out? What if Jam can't sleep? What if I'm actually really annoying and he just hasn't realised it yet???). For the moment however the excitement is winning out. The date for the move has been set after we return from Ben's wedding in Korea, we've made a few provisional plans (such as we are going to move into what was formally Dave's room, but it will contain mostly Jam's stuff, he is busy fiddling about with layout plans at the moment but it seems it will contain many LED lights...) and I'm hoping that we'll get round to tackling a few of the rooms in need of a makeover (we've already started sprusing up the garden, and bought a new bookcase for the spare room (on which Mabel is currently residing, convinced she is a shelf cat). So here are a few him and me shots from around our house at the moment (Jam is practically living here already but it will be nice when its just the two of us, witchcat and the chickens).

Homemade valentines

(Homemade red velvet cupcakes, the sprinkles say ME LOVE YOU with hearts at the end of the lines).You may remeber that last year I made these cute heart shaped tea bags for Jam. Just like the presents I made for our 1 year anniversary last week I was certain that for valentines this year I wanted to avoid the tat and make Jam his valentines gifts. His major present took a bit of work to pull together but I think it will be worth it. I bought a 600 photo classic black photo album from paperchase that you can slip photos in (rather than the ones you have to glue the photo to the pages in, which I'm not too keen on). We had loads of photos of us together doing stuff from our Awesome things to do list (stuff suggested by each of us that we would like to do with the other person, the stuff on it ranges from going ice skating together, to taking a hot air balloon ride to visiting the science museum and cooking monster cupcakes, to name but a few). I saved a selection to my memory stick and got them all printed out and then placed them in chronological order in the album (with plenty of space left to add new photo adventures).

 I added a further homemade touch by cutting letters out of handmade paper and sticking them on the front with my faithful copydex (there is a clear plactic layer that goes over the outside of the album which should help protect this quite delicate paper). Now its clear who the album belongs to and also what the contents are inside!

 The other two things that I made to go with it was a massage balm using the recipe here. Because Jam sits at a computer all day (and slouches) he gets pains in his back so I wanted to make something that I could use that I knew contained only 'nice' ingredients and hadn't been harmfully tested.

My final suprise of the trio were some homemade red velvet cupcakes which although not the really really red colour that I had envisaged didn't last that long at all (I had to almost push Jam out the house in order to get them made in the first place).

For my present I got  a bottle of my favourite malt whisky Talisker (it's brewed on the Isle of Skye which is lovely), some of my favourite perfume and an automatic door opener for the chickens (so I get my lie ins back!) I also got bought a fantastic underwear making course with the quite simply brilliant Emiliana Underwear. If you haven't visited their site you really should, they sell kits to make your own pants and reuse clothing material to do so making it ethical & green. The actual course is today and I'm sooo excited to be taking part (full write up in due course, must remeber to charge & take the camera). Happy Valentines everyone & remeber to treat yourselves as well as your loved ones this holiday!

This year in pictures

So things I was aiming to do this year were roughly as follows:
1. Go on a date with a least one nice chap (having had my heart broken yet again late last year this was definitely top of my list to regain faith in men-kind). January came and I met this chap:

This quickly followed:

:-)

2. Having spent last year playing with the frankly Awesome Stanger Things Happen at Sea (and then disbanding the band due to the sheer distances between its members)

 the search was on for a new band. This started off with a chance encounter with Sreeves (and a good deal of discussion over pints about the kind of thing we wanted to do) followed by our debute gig in April.

After the gig we decided a larger sound was called for, I'd invited my friend Emily (who I'd met through voluntering) to our 1st annual carol jaunt, we'd kept in touch and as soon as I heard she also played the cello Chris & I invited her and former Stranger member Kevin to become our fellow minstrels. The quartet was complete and we've now played a couple of gigs together with more I hope to follow in the New Year!

Some of my intentions weren't as sucessful: update and redesign the blog being only partly achieved (my friend Lea very kindly did some editing on my current template but I think a blog redesign may be called for in the new year). Also there are quite a few blog posts still missing as my hard drive died a coupe of months ago leaving me with many posts sans pictures. All this should be fixed come the new year so I guess I'm carrying this one over.

4. To start doing more of the things I love. This one was definitely achieved, 2011 if nothing else was the year that this was created:

 I also taught violin/viola at a kids ceilidh workshop at Towersey again, stage managed the Bulverton Marquee at Sidmouth (one of the largest stages I've ever worked on, there were a few hairy moments I can tell you), went on holiday to Turkey (first foreign holiday for quite a few years, while there I relaxed, read and appreciated the local wine), started attending woodschool/attempting the carving of many hours and kept in touch/spent more time in the same room as my friends.
5. Start writing more tunes/finish the novels: because of the band I've found it quite easy this year to write music, more difficult was finding time to do the serious editing thats needed on both novels (part of the problem is I think that I'm not sure what I'd do with them if I did finish them, not sure I have the stomach for agents rejections...). So although this is being carried over I'm going to first set myself the mini goal of getting a poem or another piece of writing published (this excludes work where I edit a magazine and this blog). I'm hoping a the moment to publish with the wonderful Goblin Fruit but we shall see.

What about you guys any plans/goals for next year?

Paper dress Inspiration & Making

 

After looking at all the dresses that had been made previously I decided to change some elements while keeping some of the things that worked well and keeping the feel of the original dress that started all this off. Once I'd picked up the materials, my ideas on the design were also influenced by them. One of the first things to catch my eye was two books of Japanese translations. One was quite a minimalist font whereas the other used more bold characters. In each case however because of the chartacters the paper had a softer look. On comparison with some of the other books the paoer itself appeared also less white tending to wander into pinky/dusty tones. I thought this would be fantastic for the bodice but wasn't sure it would be strong enough on its own. Plus as the dress is intended to be worn what would the comfort be like? The soloution to this came from good old newspaper paper mache. Using a fabric offcuts of a silver gown I'd previously made pinned onto Margo (my dress form) as a base and marker of where the bodice should fit to it was possible to sculpt a paper mache base (this part took quite some time to complete as I had to experiment with different glue strengths as trying to get the news paper and fabric to bond was a bit tough). Once that had dried the japanese paper could be applied to the top and when this was complete I experiemented with other original details (like lacing at the back of the dress, a shoulder strap and oriental lillies made out of paper and beads) could be added. The skirt presented yet more challenges. First of all in regard to length (I had originally envisioned a to the floor skirt with a 1800 type shape (like a slim bell really) in monotone with a split down the back, so colour pages could come flooding out) having shown this idea to Berg we decided on a shorter length because it had to be worn and transported. Also the addition of the multicoloured flowers/shoulder detail on the bodice meant that for the gown to flow colour had to be injected into the skirt at regular intervals. The next challenge was movement; quite a few of the designs that I had seen seemed to favour a fixed/static skirt.

 Anyone who has ever knocked a pile of paper over (I'm thinking most of you) would know that paper is anything but static, I wanted my dress to move, but the pages had to attach to each other somehow... it was only when I was out at a garden centre that the idea hit me. We were looking at some beautiful (and being fully grown, expensive) Koi Carp and in particular how their scales lock into each other, being fixed but allowing the fish to move freely. Could the idea of that be translated into my dress?

With the fish scales idea firmly planted in my mind I decided to start expeimenting with my skirt, making 'scales' of paper that were uniform, but different patterns and attaching only the top corner of these so that their movement would be retained. The story book dress on the previous post features sewn pages, after a trial of how that worked (it did until you applied some serious weight) and calculating how long it would take it I decided that a glue gun would probably provide a better solution. So after sourcing a variety of different books/colours and cutting all the pages to size, graduating them slightly as they went down the skirt I starting the constuction at the bottom. Within 20 squares/1 hour (which was about half a side) I had burned myself quite badly on a finger on my left hand (and this was supposed to be a special safer glue gun!). As I was teaching violin at a band workshop at Towersey music festival (for which fingers would be a distinct advantage), it was decided that no more glueing should take place in case I burnt myself again, so Jam being manly and heroic stepped into the breech, and for quite a few evenings we sat in my makeshift studio at the back of the house, me picking the squares and showing where they should go, Jam doing the glueing. Now it's nearly finished and I will unveil on Monday :-)

And then we helped build a house

One of the guys that Jam works with and his partner are building their own house (and have been living in a caravan in the grounds for 5 years while the house gets finished). Usually the only people working 'on site' are Greg and Jo, so once a month a team of people go over to help them get stuff done and this weekend I was one of those people! Some of you may remeber my previous house building exploits here, but I wasn't the only one James used to work as a construction chap so between us we hoped we'd be some serious use. The house stands on a largish plot of land in the village of Yatt. Originally there was a stone cottage there which Greg and Jo had intended to refurbish, intended that is until the chartered surveyor and morgage company came round & it was decided that a rebuild would be needed. Plans were drawn up & finally approved and work started taking down the old cottage. The new 5 bedroom house was built using mostly environmentally friendly or neutral materials (Jo works as an eco project manager so knows about this stuff) and the outside skelton of the house was then clad in the old weathered stones (each of which had to be repointed before being put on). Our job was to help with some of the more difficult areas of insulation in the loft (which was being insulated with sheeps wool which had to be fluffed to 10% before being used) and then putting more plasterboard up and helping with the damproof course in the bathroom (because that is not at all important in a room which has water in it all the time...). Greg and Jo were really great with showing us what needed to be done and answering our questions and we were well fed and watered on their sweetcorn chowder and selection of cakes (all washed down with builders tea naturally). It was really great to see the progress we made in just one day and although we were both pretty exhausted at the end of the day it was great to know that the jobs we did have helped the house to get a little nearer to completion. Despite the piles of dust we were both covered in we had lots of fun, so much in fact we are already making plans to go back in a couple of months. If you want to find out more about the build you can visit Greg and Jo's blog here.

Jam making jam/one man and his pan

So this weekend (on the non hot day) we gathered a whole load of the redcurrants that had been adorning the back fence picked them, destalked them and the added them to a giant jam pan to let the Jam make jam. If you've never made your own jam, you are missing a treat, not only does it taste much much better but its also really easy. You start with a whole lot of fruit and 1Kg of sugar, a pan big enough and a cooker (some advocate a sugar thermometer as well but if you understand the term 'rolling boil' I think you can probably do without). Heat the fruit and sugar stirring together till the sugar dissolves into the fruit and then add 200ml of water (some add more but I like my jam fruity and also this amount doesn't upset the set of the jam). When it's coming up to the boil take the lids of your jars and put them on a baking tray and into the over at about 150c for 20 mins. After 10 mins of rolling boil take a small spoonful and pour onto a cold plate. Within 2 mins or so you should get a skin/set on it a bit like jelly. If it is still liquid boil for a few more mins and then try again with a new plate. If it does make like jelly you are ready to pour into jars (being v. careful as the jars will still be v.hot). Once divided into jars leave to cool down completely before putting the lids on and voila, like the Jam you should have jam (ours is technically jelly I believe as we strained all impurities out so it was clear and gem like, cause it is for presents and hey it looks pretty, awwww).

My Jammy lies over the ocean, my Jammy lies over the sea...

So this morning at some un-godly hour Jam left for France for an entire week of being manly and chopping wood with his dad in the depths of the French countryside (Sacrebleu!). Unfortunately as it is the actual depths they do not get internet access (booo) which means I'm on reduced rations of one very expensive text per day. You would have thought being me I'd have a detailed plan of stuff to do to fill the time, but alas with the impending exam I seem to be doing a lot of staring at music theory books and trying to aviod most serious revision. All is not lost however as on Sunday I've arranged to go to one of the very special Oxford coffee concerts with a friend to see the Carducci String Quartet (plus by Sunday my exam will be over and it will be a mere 4 days till Jam gets back). What about you my lovelies? What are you up to this weekend?